The wide yorker stopped working and half the bowlers never got the memo

It was the safest ball in cricket for a decade, and then batters learned to reach it, and it quietly became a free boundary.

For years the death-overs instruction was simple enough to give to a nineteen year old. Wide yorker, outside off, fifth or sixth stump, and let him try to dig it out. Worst case a single to deep point. Best case a dot or a mishit to third.

That ball is now dangerous, and the reason is the batters got longer.

Specifically, they learned to move. Nobody stands still at the death any more. A batter who shuffles half a metre across his stumps as the bowler loads up turns a sixth-stump yorker into a fourth-stump one, which is exactly where he wanted it, and the swing arc is already committed. Then there are the ones who go the other way, stepping deep leg side and opening up the whole off side, at which point a wide yorker is just a full toss on a plate outside off with the field up. The margin on that delivery is about fifteen centimetres. Miss it full and it is a low full toss. Miss it short and it is a length ball on off stump, which at the death is the worst ball in cricket.

So what has taken over is the hard length. Back of a length, into the pitch, aimed at the top of the stumps or slightly into the body, with a deep square leg and a long on. Not glamorous. It relies on the surface having some bounce and on the bowler having the pace to make a pull shot genuinely risky, but the geometry works: the batter cannot get under it to loft straight, and to hit it he has to swing across the line into the two deepest fielders you have.

The knuckle ball and the wide slower one still have places, mostly as change-ups, and the yorker itself is not dead. Straight yorkers at the base of leg stump still work fine, because there is nowhere to move to. It is specifically the wide version, the one that got taught to everyone because it was low risk, that has flipped from low risk to high.

What I would like to see, and occasionally do from the sharper captains, is a proper commitment to the field first and the delivery second. Set for the hard length, tell your bowler the pull shot is the intended outcome, and then actually stick with it when it goes for six once. Most captains do not. One boundary and they revert to the wide yorker, because at least when that goes for six it is the ball everyone expected.